Newburgh 4 motive: Was it God or money?

MANHATTAN — The Newburgh Four sat down at T.G.I. Fridays for their last supper together and discussed a familiar topic: money.

BY DOYLE MURPHY

MANHATTAN — The Newburgh Four sat down at T.G.I. Fridays for their last supper together and discussed a familiar topic: money.

Undercover FBI informant Shahed Hussain told the men he'd reserved a UPS box in Newburgh and filled it with $5,000 for each of them. They could pick up their money after the mission.

Payday never came. Law enforcement agents swarmed the men the next night in the Bronx, ending what prosecutors say was a plot to bomb a synagogue and Jewish center before returning to the mid-Hudson to shoot down planes at Stewart Air National Guard Base.

In federal court Wednesday, Hussain said the cash in the UPS box was only "getaway money."

Promised payments have been a central issue in the case as defense attorneys have tried to show Hussain and the FBI lured four poor men from the City of Newburgh into a terrorist plot. Money was clearly on the minds of the defendants in the days leading up to their arrests May 20, 2009.

Prosecutors played recorded excerpts of one conversation in which the alleged ringleader, James Cromitie, asks Hussain to ask terrorist organization Jaish-e-Mohammed to send them rent money.

"We not doing it for the money," Cromitie said, "but we got houses, we got apartments."

Assistant U.S. Attorney David Raskin pointed out that each man, when questioned by Hussain, said they were doing it for Allah, not the money. Cromitie's attorney, Vincent Briccetti, said in his opening statement his client was "singing for his supper."

Defense attorneys have focused on a BMW that Hussain promised to give Cromitie after the mission and a recorded mention of $250,000.

Raskin questioned Hussain about that $250,000 Wednesday, and Hussain said "$250,000" was just a code word in the operation.

Raskin has led the government's side of the case in a chronological sequence of recordings toward the day of the defendants' capture. The jury Wednesday watched video of the men as they retrieved bombs and missiles — rendered harmless by the FBI — and headed for the Bronx.